Word: puckishness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...puckish caller once asked Interior Secretary James Watt during a radio talk show whether his baldness was caused by acid rain. Watt laughed off the wisecrack, as well he might. In spite of rising concern in the Northeast and Canada, Administration spokesmen have repeatedly insisted that nothing could really be done about acid rain and the industry-produced sulfur emissions allegedly behind them until all the scientific facts were in. Suddenly last week, however, facts came raining down like a summer squall, in effect making further scientific debate on what mainly causes the problem all but irrelevant...
Only two characters come close to achieving that timelessness and universality which make a character endure. Ben Evett, who plays the role of Vindice with puckish bravado, and Peter Hansen, the Duke's bastard son of conniving mien, carry the play through its weaker moments. When Vindice again draws forth Gloriana's skull--this time as a weapon to poison the Duke, who unsuspecting that she is only a "shell of death" will try to steal a kiss from her in a dark corridor--he handles the scene with a deft blend of madness and humor that make the murder...
...timing. He can manage to be topical without sounding like every other pundit; he can venture into quirky subjects without seeming irrelevant. He knows how to provoke readers enough that they keep reading, but not so much that they angrily turn the page. He is a master of both puckish wit and ear-splitting indignation, yet on matters of moral consequence he can write with majestically measured restraint. He boasts of having taken the scalps of Cabinet members, congressional leaders and diplomats, yet he is quicker to offer a correction, or to let a target answer back, than almost...
...prepared for Orlando's audiences. Though gratuitously academic at times ("In an extraordinary passage in 5/8 time, considered outlandish and daring in the 18th century, Orlando crosses the river Styx...) and occasionally pretentious ("What is man? What is a man?), for the most part, the notes show the puckish sense of fun that characterizes the production at its best. "This will not do," Sellars writes, "and Zoroastro abandons subtlety and launches into his aria, 'Leave Love and Follow Mars: Go Fight!' (The Pentagon, after all, is what is keeping the space program alive.)" Or for Dorinda's final summons...
...something has changed. This puckish little figure, this professorial imp with the loony grin, does not sound angry. He is not wailing about the wickedness of his time. He is mocking the past-mocking the angry radicals, mocking the dreamers, mocking the quest for visions. The audience is laughing with him. They are howling, but in pleasure rather than anger, as he thrusts an arm up for each of the jokes. They hear satire, not nobly expended pain, in these lines: ". . . who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall...